Our virus protection regime recently indicated that we had been attacked by a "Trojan Horse" program, which had unknowingly been passed on by one of our clients.

This type of virus can spread quite widely, so the following will help you to detect whether you have received it, and how to eradicate it from your system.

The program is called HAPPY99.EXE and is typically transmitted as an attachment to an e-mail message. On opening the file, a small window opens containing a firework display against a black background.  If you receive a file with this attachment DO NOT OPEN IT.

If you have been unfortunate enough to open the file, then one symptom of the infestation may be that your e-mail software will crash when trying to send a message, particularly a message with an attached file.  On the other hand, you may not notice anything untoward at all.   In fact, the message is being sent, but the program will have replaced a communication file in your windows directory.  Every message that you send from that point onwards will result in the system sending a second message to the same address with the HAPPY99.EXE file attached.

You can easily check if you have been infected, by looking in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder on the C: drive of your PC for the following files:

SKA.DLL

SKA.EXE

WSOCK32.SKA

LIST.SKA

If they are present, then you have been infected. Do not send any further e-mail messages.

The instructions to manually eradicate the infestation are too long to repeat here.  Call Bernard Vincent on 01224 588123 to obtain a set of instructions and a briefing paper on virus protection measures.